Helen

Today is Helen Keller’s birthday.  

I’ve been a long-time admirer of Helen Keller. To say she was a remarkable woman doesn’t even begin to extol her achievements. 

Yes, we all remember the iconic scene at the water pump when she was seven years old and made the connection that the finger-spelling meant “water”. (Interestingly enough, Helen never had any memory of that event.) Impressive, yes, but by the time she was ten, she was tackling advanced German, French, Latin and Greek.

I wonder what she would think of kids nowadays who text “wer u at”.

She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Geometry was a very challenging subject for her. Challenging? Can you imagine creating proofs about spacial concepts when you have no visualization of such? 

Early photographs of Helen always display her in profile in an attempt to hide her deformed eyes. As a young woman, her withered eyes were replaced with prosthetic ones (glass) that we later see. 

The folks at Fox News would absolutely loathe Helen Keller. 

She was an avid member of the Socialist Party of America, (gasp!) championed the causes of labor unions, campaigned for equal rights of women and African-Americans, and was outspoken about reproductive rights and the prevention of venereal diseases. 

I just finished reading the book, Helen Keller in Love. Yes, at the age of 37, Helen became engaged to a man nine years her junior. Upon learning of the engagement, Helen’s mother and brother-in-law thwarted the marriage, practically holding her hostage at the family home in Alabama. 

Her fiancé, Peter Fagan, never spoke to Helen again (or wasn’t allowed to). He later married, fathered five children, but kept a photo of Helen on his desk for the remainder of his life. Years later, one of his daughters contacted Helen and relayed this news to her. 

Yes, a big Happy Birthday to you, dear Helen. Though you could not see or hear, you opened the eyes and hearts of many who had been blinded by ignorance and fear. Through your eyes, we are able to see how truly radiant this world of ours can be.

Braille

My line of work involves promoting the employment of individuals with disabilities. In doing so, I'm always learning a lot regarding this subject. It's pretty fascinating, actually.

Recently, we encountered a young man in his mid twenties who had been blind since a very young age. He had, of course, learned to read and write proficiently in Braille and listen and speak in hand-spelling.

Recently, through medical procedures, he has become sighted enough to see large print. What is really interesting is that he has not, of course, learned to read English text until his recent sightedness and has only begun to do so. However, (and here's the fascinating part) now that he is newly-sighted, he prefers reading "sighted" Braille!

Think about it. He's become highly educated reading in Braille. Now that he's sighted, he prefers and is more proficients at reading printed Braille rather than touch-Braille or printed English.

At my workplace, we're all about making accommodations for individuals with disabilities. We have the most recent Braille writer and can convert PDF-to-Word-to-Braille at the drop of a hat.

Helen Keller is one of my all-time favorite idols; not because she was deaf and blind, but because she was highly educated, wrote some of the most profound essays on universal theology, fought for human rights with regard to the disabled, preached an awareness of womens' venereal diseases and, most of all, was a staunch Socialist.

While at Radcliffe, she also struggled with algebra and, most of all, with geometry. Think about it. No auditory or visual stimuli or recollection.
I can see how she made it through with the abstract equations of algebra, but the spacial theorems of plane geometry. . . ?
Cool!

And now, our friend just has to brush the side of a pencil across the "invisible" bumps of Braille and an entire written world is instantly opened up and more accessible to him.
Poof!
A whole new concept that none of us had ever thought about.

Don't you just love that?
I sure do!

The Women in my Life. Part Two: Helen Keller

Helen Keller (1880-1968)


(By the way, I thought it would be appropriate to display a photo of Helen Keller with her Oscar, since it is Oscar night).

Sure, we've all seen "The Miracle Worker" both Patty Duked and Melissa Gilmored. It's sweet, but hardly touches the depth of what this woman accomplished. Yes, she finally uttered "wa-wa" by the water pump at the age of six. But did you know that by the age of ten she was already studying advanced Latin, Greek, German and French? My god, I still cringe when remembering my baby-Latin lessons in the seminary.

In college at Radcliffe, she excelled in algebra and geometry. Geometry is challenging enough when you can see an isosceles triangle and hear a teacher explain a theorem.

Her life wasn't all a bed of roses either. She fell in love with a young man soon after college. Deeply in love, yet the romance was thwarted by her mother and beloved teacher. Ouch.

While abroad on one occasion, a fire leveled their house, obliterating her all her manuscripts and braille texts which were so rare in those days. The woman knew about loss and affliction.

Helen Keller was also a staunch Communist, campaigning for the rights of the working-class poor and disenfranchised. As early as the 1920's, she brought to the forefront an awareness of syphilis, its treatment and for women's reproductive rights.

I note these facts, not to shock anyone, but simply do get away from the fluffy, Victorian sentimentality that seems to follow her.

Here was a woman ahead of her time. A woman of principle!
And, a woman with an incredible insight toward the challenges of life:
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been open for us."

-- Helen Keller